Re: The Battle Royale S2 [Round 2: Prospect Creek]
10-18-2010, 08:20 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by Nodge.
Swhales stumbled slowly to a halt. He'd been running at a respectable pace away from Wardell and the former Photographer, judiciously picking a weaving path in the opposite direction to which Sirius had flown. He took a moment to look around, then ducked through a shuttered wooden door and stumbled into the dessicated remains of what was once either a kitchen or the place where a lot of incredibly elderly jars of pickle had come to die.
Breathing in out in a quiet, gutteral laugh, he collapsed into a worn chair to consider the hand fate had dealt him.
Sirius had set him to look for Jeremy, something Tim had no interest in doing. Jeremy was not particularly threatening, and anybody who could travel through locked doors anywhere in the world almost had to be a thief. In Timothy's hastily written moral code you did not hunt your own, if only because they were smart enough to keep their valuables well-hidden. Besides, Tim still harboured some hope in a dirty little corner of the organ he passed off as a heart that he might be able to get out of this mess, and killing the escape artist seemed like the wrong way of going about it. Sirius had suggested - no, ordered that they leave here by killing someone as they had been instructed. Chewing away in the back of his mind had been the idea that eventually Sirius would simply kill all of them (including, and this was important, him) and leave. It wouldn't be inhuman of him to slaughter those around him, because he was not in fact entirely human.
Tim shook himself, realising he had begun to stare absently in to space. Sighing, he rose gently to his feet. He had already made up his mind, he realised. Before starting this introspective daydreaming, before even setting foot in the kitchen; he needed to kill Sirius. The problem was that Sirius, to put it mildly, could kill him stone dead by sneezing on him. With no chance in a fair fight and no opportunity to backstab a man who could fly, this meant dealing with the damned Gods again in the probably futile hope that they would do something more useful than for instance, paint the whole town green and make it rain cheese on toast.
He quietly piled up everything he could find; the books he'd got from Wardell (he'd never figured out what a Spekies was anyway), the loose change he'd had hidden in his sock, some of the unknowable meat from the Factory that had clung tenaciously to his bootlace, the jars, table and chairs scattered in the room and with a flourish, Sirius' somewhat grubby stolen eyeball.
"Alright then," he muttered to the empty air. "that should get their attention."
In the dubious privacy of his own head, he was aware that this might not be true; Mug Ruith for instance only accepted sacrifices with wheels in them, whereas the Dagda had made it clear early on that it would only accept Timothy's broken teeth as sacrifices; Molars for preference but Incisors if they're all he had on him. Still, it was a pretty good hoard. He fixed the solitary eyeball with a solid stare, placed his hand to his collar, and waited for the rush of voices that usually signalled the arrival of his Pantheon.
...
After a few moments he began to feel somewhat foolish, stood in a dilapidated kitchen staring at an accusing eyeball with his hand around his own neck and listening to the silence. As he pondered what he would do if they did not respond, he realised that the eyeball was drifting towards the ground. Looking downwards, it became clear that the source of this magic trick was, somehow disappointingly, magic. The hoard had begun to dissolve, turning at first a golden yellow before blackening to burnt ashes and vanishing into the woodwork. On the edge of hearing Tim heard words whispered, muttered orders in a tantalisingly familiar voice;
"breathe the gas."
"Pardon, Oh Mighty One?" responded Swhales, feeling a little uneasy at the tone of the command.
"breathethegasBreatheTheGasBREATHETHEGAS!" Came the increasingly strident order and before he knew it, Tim was lying with his face to the floor, huffing at the eggy floorboards with all his might and nursing the biggest headache of his entire adult life. Several uncontrollable lungfulls later, there came a sigh that no earthly lungfulls could produce; his head burning fiercly and the myriad voices of his god strangely absent, Tim started to cough, rocking backward from the force as the air began to thicken, the room spin and his eyes stream...
And then he stopped. He stopped, because there was no choice. He stopped, because suddenly he realized who that voice had belonged to all along. He stopped above all because he was staring up, mouth agape as a form that previously had taken up several stories poured itself through an abyssl void to fit comfortably into a kitchen that would have been crowded out by an overweight gerbil.
A Door had been found, left unlocked by The Composer simply because she was not aware it existed. It had been difficult to win past the maddened Celtic Gods guarding it, oh yes, and a price would undoubtedly have to be paid; it would not be cheap. Now though, as it loomed through dimensions that had no right to exist over the man in the tiny, fetid little kitchen he had hidden in, The Eccentric did not care.
It would have Revenge. And Bolivian fire ants. And cake.
Swhales stumbled slowly to a halt. He'd been running at a respectable pace away from Wardell and the former Photographer, judiciously picking a weaving path in the opposite direction to which Sirius had flown. He took a moment to look around, then ducked through a shuttered wooden door and stumbled into the dessicated remains of what was once either a kitchen or the place where a lot of incredibly elderly jars of pickle had come to die.
Breathing in out in a quiet, gutteral laugh, he collapsed into a worn chair to consider the hand fate had dealt him.
Sirius had set him to look for Jeremy, something Tim had no interest in doing. Jeremy was not particularly threatening, and anybody who could travel through locked doors anywhere in the world almost had to be a thief. In Timothy's hastily written moral code you did not hunt your own, if only because they were smart enough to keep their valuables well-hidden. Besides, Tim still harboured some hope in a dirty little corner of the organ he passed off as a heart that he might be able to get out of this mess, and killing the escape artist seemed like the wrong way of going about it. Sirius had suggested - no, ordered that they leave here by killing someone as they had been instructed. Chewing away in the back of his mind had been the idea that eventually Sirius would simply kill all of them (including, and this was important, him) and leave. It wouldn't be inhuman of him to slaughter those around him, because he was not in fact entirely human.
Tim shook himself, realising he had begun to stare absently in to space. Sighing, he rose gently to his feet. He had already made up his mind, he realised. Before starting this introspective daydreaming, before even setting foot in the kitchen; he needed to kill Sirius. The problem was that Sirius, to put it mildly, could kill him stone dead by sneezing on him. With no chance in a fair fight and no opportunity to backstab a man who could fly, this meant dealing with the damned Gods again in the probably futile hope that they would do something more useful than for instance, paint the whole town green and make it rain cheese on toast.
He quietly piled up everything he could find; the books he'd got from Wardell (he'd never figured out what a Spekies was anyway), the loose change he'd had hidden in his sock, some of the unknowable meat from the Factory that had clung tenaciously to his bootlace, the jars, table and chairs scattered in the room and with a flourish, Sirius' somewhat grubby stolen eyeball.
"Alright then," he muttered to the empty air. "that should get their attention."
In the dubious privacy of his own head, he was aware that this might not be true; Mug Ruith for instance only accepted sacrifices with wheels in them, whereas the Dagda had made it clear early on that it would only accept Timothy's broken teeth as sacrifices; Molars for preference but Incisors if they're all he had on him. Still, it was a pretty good hoard. He fixed the solitary eyeball with a solid stare, placed his hand to his collar, and waited for the rush of voices that usually signalled the arrival of his Pantheon.
...
After a few moments he began to feel somewhat foolish, stood in a dilapidated kitchen staring at an accusing eyeball with his hand around his own neck and listening to the silence. As he pondered what he would do if they did not respond, he realised that the eyeball was drifting towards the ground. Looking downwards, it became clear that the source of this magic trick was, somehow disappointingly, magic. The hoard had begun to dissolve, turning at first a golden yellow before blackening to burnt ashes and vanishing into the woodwork. On the edge of hearing Tim heard words whispered, muttered orders in a tantalisingly familiar voice;
"breathe the gas."
"Pardon, Oh Mighty One?" responded Swhales, feeling a little uneasy at the tone of the command.
"breathethegasBreatheTheGasBREATHETHEGAS!" Came the increasingly strident order and before he knew it, Tim was lying with his face to the floor, huffing at the eggy floorboards with all his might and nursing the biggest headache of his entire adult life. Several uncontrollable lungfulls later, there came a sigh that no earthly lungfulls could produce; his head burning fiercly and the myriad voices of his god strangely absent, Tim started to cough, rocking backward from the force as the air began to thicken, the room spin and his eyes stream...
And then he stopped. He stopped, because there was no choice. He stopped, because suddenly he realized who that voice had belonged to all along. He stopped above all because he was staring up, mouth agape as a form that previously had taken up several stories poured itself through an abyssl void to fit comfortably into a kitchen that would have been crowded out by an overweight gerbil.
A Door had been found, left unlocked by The Composer simply because she was not aware it existed. It had been difficult to win past the maddened Celtic Gods guarding it, oh yes, and a price would undoubtedly have to be paid; it would not be cheap. Now though, as it loomed through dimensions that had no right to exist over the man in the tiny, fetid little kitchen he had hidden in, The Eccentric did not care.
It would have Revenge. And Bolivian fire ants. And cake.